Catoptrophobia
by Sinuessa
Summary: Every time Nea looks into a mirror, he sees somebody he loved and destroyed, but that's okay; it wasn't any different before.
**A/N: I like breaking my own heart. Also, this is a mess… I wrote this at 2 AM and canon is confusing, don't blame me. Trigger warning for negative thoughts, violence and mentions of self-harm.**

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Choosing between taking over Allen's body and dying was, to Nea, directly equivalent to choosing between a personal tragedy and a global catastrophe. Either he'd destroy somebody dear to him (a tragedy) or he'd let the world get destroyed by an insane Noah memory walking around in his brother's body, with a terrible fashion sense no less (a catastrophe, or perhaps, The Catastrophe). He chose a tragedy, but it was never even up to him - it wasn't his choice to make. It was Allen's. Besides, they all decided - Nea and Allen and Mana - to choose the lesser evil, some time ago.

That doesn't mean Nea is okay with it.

Now, after taking over Allen's body, his day looks like this: He wakes up too early from a nightmare, or a memory, or a dream he cannot remember for the love of him, or just gets up from the bed like a corpse because he hasn't been sleeping. He takes the first sigh of the day, one of many, and goes to wash his face to the bathroom. Best case scenario, the crappy motel he's staying in lacks a mirror; worst case scenario, it does not. Let's go with the latter one now, because that's how it usually goes. So, Nea D. Campbell, who is, at this point of the day, drowning in self-pity, accidentally glances in the mirror. Sometimes he sighs again, sometimes he screams, or averts his eyes, or just stares into the reflection of not himself, but the man who used to be a friend, the man he loved and destroyed, but that's okay; it wasn't any different before.

It wasn't any different before, because it was his brother's face he saw in the mirror thirty-five years ago.

After Adam had taken over for the first time, after Mana had disappeared, Nea took it upon himself to put all the blame on his own shoulders. What if he had said "yes" to Adam when he'd offered him glory and a reason to live? What if it had been him who got possessed? What if? He had been able to resist the ancient Noah memory, why not Mana?

"Don't let me become my worst nightmare," Mana had said to him in a rare moment of sanity. "If you cannot save me - kill me, for that is a fate kinder than the alternative."

But Nea loved his brother a little too much, and so when the time came to kill Mana, he didn't. Instead, Adam came for him, and his brothe was destroyed.

Mana was also a man Nea loved and destroyed; also a man whose face stared back at him every day for what seemed like an eternity, but was, in fact, only a few days, until the Earl devoured Nea.

When they were young, Nea was proud when somebody compared him to his brother. Mana was kind and funny and friendly, and they might have shared the same face, but he looked so much more beautiful than Nea. Maybe it was the easy-going smile he always seemed to wear, maybe it was Nea's constant frown or the ever-present bags under his eyes, but they were so different, outside and inside and it was clear which one was the better person. Nea knew that, and he wasn't jealous of his brother - he used to be happy about being compared to him.

After Mana was gone, Nea wanted to mutilate his face so that he would never be able to see that face again, but he also _wanted_ to see it, that exact same face as Mana, with the exact same expressions as him, and Nea was stuck in a loop, because he didn't really know what he wanted.

And now it's happening all over again.

Before, he used to smile in the mirror, trying to imitate the smile that Mana wore all the time, and pretend to be someone he was not, while also wanting to take a knife and shove it up his nose. Now, he's trying to talk himself out of dying his - Allen's - hair an auburn color, for some inexplicable masochistic reason. It's ridiculous, of course, because doing that would make him even more miserable, and he knows that, but at the same time, he wants to see his friend again, just as he was able to see Mana all those years ago, and it's completely illogical.

Maybe he is a masochist.

So he does nothing. He doesn't dye his hair, he doesn't try to change Allen's appearance completely, he does nothing. He's a coward.

Nea is sitting on a cold bathroom floor, alone, blaming himself for things he caused, things that weren't even his fault. He regrets not saying "yes" to Adam, he regrets not saving Mana, he regrets not killing him, he regrets agreeing to Allen's proposal. He hates himself for not knowing what he wants, for being a coward. His life is one big regret, and, a Noah memory with a terrible fashion sense destroying the world or not, he wonders how many lives would be saved had he only died thirty-five years ago. He wonders and wonders and drowns any common sense in what-if's and maybe's and he breaks down crying. But that's okay; he'll be okay.

It's okay; he's used to it; it wasn't any different before.


End file.
